


Lost and Found

by Hinn_Raven



Series: Donut Siblings [10]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Siblings, Bad Ending, Gen, Grief/Mourning, RvB Angst War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-23 14:36:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6119524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hinn_Raven/pseuds/Hinn_Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agent Washington has had a brother for fifty-nine days when he sends his brother and their friends off to fight. This is the aftermath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Goodluckdetective (scorpiontales)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiontales/gifts).



> Yeah so Iz asked me to write angst for this verse for the RVB Angst War: "After Charon, Donut isn't sure to make it because of his injuries. Wash waits." Feel free to disregard if you want; I'll probably write a happy version of this AU later, so this isn't necessarily canon. =]

**This is true:** Agent Washington has had a brother for fifty-nine days when he sends his brother and their friends off to fight.

He fights the mantis instead of going with them, Carolina at his side and adrenaline in his veins, and then they get the message, the call for help, and he _runs._ To the ship, to his brother, to his friends, to Hargrove.

 **This is also true:** They’re too late.

Wash rips his way through row after row of soldiers, listening desperately for the now-familiar high pitch scream of his brother’s, but he hears nothing.

Carolina beats him to breaking down the door.

“Oh thank god,” Tucker says, and Wash _stares_ , because Tucker is wearing the Meta’s armor, colored his signature aqua, and he doesn’t know what to make of that, doesn’t know what to think.

“Call Doctor Grey!” Simmons yells, and Wash’s eyes are immediately drawn to the pink figure on the floor.

There’s so much blood.

“Donut!” Wash yells, and he’s by his brother’s side in an instant, pressing his hands over a wound that seems to be gushing blood.

“Out of the way!” Dr. Grey barrels by him, shoving him aside without a thought. “Get a stretcher in here, _now_!” There’s no trace of her normal good humor, no spring in her step. Wash is oddly grateful for it.  

Wash watches in a daze as the Feds and the Rebels alike sweep in and take his brother away. He stands there, in a daze, realizing that his brother’s blood is on his hands again, and he sways where he stands.

“Tucker?” He hears Carolina ask, voice soft and slow, as if she’s just realized that the world’s about to fall apart. “Where’s Epsilon?”

He leaves before he hears the answer, because he knows.

He sits by his brother’s bedside. He leaves all his armor behind, and holds his hand. “Wake up,” he tells him— _begs him_. It’s not right. None of this is. He already killed his brother once. He can’t be responsible for it this time.

He sent them in alone. If he’d gone with them—

The Reds flit in and out, their injuries obviously healing, and their concern obvious. They tell him Donut will be fine. He agrees with them. Donut survived bleeding out in power armor for weeks on end. The scars peek out from the corners of the hospital gown, a stark reminder of his brother’s betrayal.

Carolina stays with him, sometimes, lurking in the background or sitting next to him. She’d lost her brother too, he thinks, and then he shoves the thought aside, because he _isn’t going to lose him_. Donut’s going to wake up, and he’s going to laugh at Wash for being so worried, and then they’re going to go home.

He’s going to see their parents again, and see Martha and Jackie and Mitch, and Donut will make him apologize a thousand times over, and he’ll meet their children and their dogs, and he’ll hug his mother a thousand times, and she’ll laugh at Donut’s jokes and make grilled cheese sandwiches and everything will be _fine_.

He tells Donut this.

“You’re going to be okay,” he whispers, and it’s like a prayer.

He listens to the hum of the machines.

 “I won’t go home without you, you here?” He says, in between stories of Freelancer adventures and recollections of their childhood. “I can’t face them alone. Not after losing you again.”

 **This is a lie:** When Franklin Delano Donut has been in a coma for fifteen days, he wakes up again.

He hugs his brother and says hello to his friends.

And then they go home.


	2. Home Fires

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Donut's family comes to Chorus for the funeral.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Iz wanted to see the funeral after the events of last chapter! And since it's still Angst War season, I gladly rose to the occasion.

**This is true:** The officer comes on a Thursday, and he gives them a letter. An actual letter, written on paper with crisp calligraphy and a military seal on it. Abigale and John stare at it for too long, knowing what’s going to be inside.

Their Franklin is dead.

He’s to be buried on the planet he died on—some place called Chorus—and the UNSC has offered to bring their whole family there for the funeral.

The letter tells them their son was a hero.

 **This is true:** When they got word that Franklin’s ship had gone missing, they had cried for weeks. They’d lost David the same way, and deep down, they’d known they weren’t getting Franklin back either.

They call the girls, letting them know.

The five of them crowd onto the ship, and clutch at each other. They swap stories of Franklin the whole way, and try not to cry, because they know Franklin wouldn’t want that.

Chorus, they learn, has been at war for years. The citizens are used to war and death, but they all look at them with wonder in their eyes. “You’re Donut’s family?” The General, a woman with grey-streaked hair named Kimball says. She looks like she hasn’t slept in a year, and Abigale looks around, and sees too many people looking similar. “You’ll probably want to talk to Sarge, then,” she continues.

“Oh, Sarge is here?” John says, trying to smile. “Our Franklin told us so much about him—” He breaks off, realizing that there won’t be any transmissions of their boy in his lightish-red armor cheerfully relaying his adventure.

“Yes,” Kimball says, and she leads them to where he is. They’ve seen pictures of the man in armor, of course, but he looks infinitely older out of armor. He’s leaning on a cane, and growling at a large man who can’t be anyone but Dexter Grif. Both of them are covered in injuries that look far too recent.

“Did they lose anyone else?” Mitch is the one to speak up. She’s playing with her wedding ring again. “Or was it just Frank?”

Kimball sighed. “Church sacrificed himself to give them a chance, they said,” she offered.

“Wasn’t Church dead already?” Marsha asked, leaning against Mitch for comfort. Franklin’s stories had never really made sense—they seemed to loop on themselves more often than not, and Franklin would sometimes tell unimportant parts in great detail and skip over other parts. But they’d pieced together some parts.

“Which time? It never seemed to stick,” Jackie is trying to joke, but her mouth is faltering and her eyes are shiny.

Abigale closes her eyes, and approaches Sarge, who’s finally noticed them. His eyes are darting between them, and from the curl of his mouth, he knows exactly who they are. There’s too much of a family reaction for him not too.

“Thank you for looking after my boy,” she says, her eyes damp. “He looked up to you so much.”

Sarge looks incredibly uncomfortable. “He was—he was a good soldier. A true Red to the end!”

Jackie laughs suddenly, doubling over, tears streaming down her face. “Oh god!” She says. “You _are_ just like he said!” The laughter turns into sobs, and she collapses to the floor, and Mitch and Marsha try to pull her to her feet, but she’s dead weight, and won’t go up.

A painfully skinny man with enough cyborg implants that he _has_ to be Richard Simmons limps up to them—his robot leg seems to be too short, and it doesn’t match the rest of him. It’s probably a replacement. “They’re starting the ceremony soon, Sarge!” He stops short when he sees them. “Ah, Ms. Donut? Mr. Donut?”

None of them correct him about the last name—it seems too petty, on this day of all days. “You must be Simmons,” John says. “He told us so much about you.”

“You’re Grif, right?” Mitch asks the man who’s desperately trying to snuff out his cigarette on the nearby wall.

“Yeah,” Dexter Grif clears his throat. “I am.” He doesn’t meet her eyes.

“We should probably get going then,” Abigale says quietly. “If the ceremony is about to start.” She shepherds her family in the way Simmons came from, including the Reds.

She’d always wanted to meet her boy’s other family, but not like this. She swiped away her tears, and kept moving forward. At least she had a body to bury this time. Unlike David.

She stopped herself right there. If she thought about David today, she thought that she’d split right down the middle from crying. And she couldn’t do that, not today. Not when she hadn’t even seen the body of her baby boy yet.

But it was hard not to think of David, not with everyone wearing armor and the graveyards and the flags.

She stands by the coffin and cries, reaching down to touch his face one last time. She listens to Lavernius Tucker give a speech, and then Sarge, and then Kimball. She takes a medal from Kimball and a flag from Sarge, and then she sits in the front row by a man in grey and yellow power armor and cries as Grif and Simmons help Caboose and Agent Carolina lower the coffin into the ground.

“He wanted to be a soldier so badly when he was younger,” Abigale whispers, listening to the band play some sort of old funeral march. “It was because of his brother, you know. David. We lost him early in the war, and Franklin wanted to follow him so badly. He loved David so very much.” Her mouth quivered slightly. “He wanted to be a hero, just like his brother.”

The man makes a noise that sounds like a sob. “He was. A hero.”

She stares at the small memorial they’ve erected. She’s heard the platitudes a thousand times over, for both of her sons now. But somehow, the words don’t feel empty coming from this man. He _means_ them, the same way the Reds do, the same way the Blues do. “How did you know my boy?” Abigale asks him, who seems very quiet and very still, as if he’s cried every tear he has. Abigale knows the feeling. She’s now buried two of her sons.

“I’m—” His voice cracks. There’s a long pause, as if he’s trying to figure out what to say. Then he bows his head.

 “I’m Wash,” he whispers, and Abigale thinks that if she took off his helmet, she’d see tear tracks.

 **This is a lie:** “I was—I was Donut’s superior officer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I owe this entire family happy things after this oops


End file.
